MANILA, Philippines -- Who would have thought that a mass protest action against the Arroyo administration could be much fun? Around 3,000 to 5,000 students from Catholic and public schools joined veterans of street protests to express their opposition to a government they believe doesn’t value the truth and which they have accused of covering up a wide array wrongdoing.

But instead of the usual fiery speeches and chanting of sloganss, the Truth Festival on the Roxas Boulevard on Friday night featured art works, dancing, and pop songs. The students came with their friends and classmates and stayed up all night.

For most of the young participants, the atmosphere was more of a block party that stretched from the afternoon to the early hours of Saturday than a mass protest against the Arroyo government.

At the beginning of the program, some fine arts students painted colorful murals on stage and on the street.

The students, some coming from nearby provinces, were entertained by dance numbers from pep squads of Adamson University and De La Salle University.

The University of the Philippines’ Kontra Gapi provided music, along with singers Grace Nono and Bayang Barrios.

A group of students from Concordia College in Manila said it was their first time to join a rally. Femielin Habal, a fourth-year nursing student, said the rally was different from the chaotic and violent street protests usually seen on television.

“This is better, more light-hearted. Now we know that a rally can also be peaceful,” she said, adding that the violent demonstrations on television had scared them away.

If all demonstrations against the government were like this, Habal said she would have participated in them.

Although they have never joined rallies before, Habal and her friends said they were displeased by how the government was running the country.

Her classmates, Rusell Dizon and Bobbie Lauzon, said they witnessed first-hand the government’s ineptitude at the hospitals where they were undergoing their internships.

“At the V.Luna, there is no medication for tuberculosis patients. They are supposed to get it every day for six months, but they don’t. How can they get better?” Lauzon said.

“Where do our taxes go?” Dizon chimed in.

In another part of the crowd, a group of teenaged boys clad in their best black and punk outfits, said they were encouraged to attend the festival because they heard that the well-known punk band The Wuds was supposed to play there.

It was almost 11 p.m. and the band had yet to appear on stage but the boys said they would not leave yet.

John Ross Rowalle, a high school junior at a public school in Pasay City with kohl-lined eyes and pants where he painted the words “their guns will never silence us,” said they agreed with the speakers that the government has taken things too far.

“I am concerned about the human rights. The government wants to demolish our homes. In our community, when somebody has done wrong, he is just gunned down,” he said.

The Truth Festival, which was organized by artists’ groups, progressive organizations, and the religious community, was aimed at revealing the truths on issues that the Arroyo government has tried to hide or obfuscate.

Organizers of the event said adding cultural presentations and entertainment to a gathering that focuses on dour issues was a way of getting the people’s attention to the wrongdoings of the Arroyo government.

“In the search for truth, we thought it may be good to come up with a more innovative and creative way of telling the people about it. That’s why we came up with this idea,” said Sr. Mary John Mananzan, national co-chairperson of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP).

“We will band together to honor truth and to make the Philippines the most truthful place on earth through the arts, one street at a time,” said Mananzan.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, in an interview, said it was the intention of the organizers to make the mass protest less confrontational to attract a wide range of sectors, particularly the youth.

“The point was to reveal what the people really feel. This is a joyful gathering. There is no confrontation,” he said.

“The turnout was better than we expected. The people are still interested in the truth. We have here sectors from schools, the Church, the urban poor,” Pabillo added.

Speakers at the night rally included former Vice-President Teofisto Guingona, Edita Burgos, mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos, and Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, the Senate witness in the $329-million national broadband network corruption scandal that implicated the President’s husband and allies.

Guingona discussed the iniquity of the 12-percent value-added tax, which he said the poor could ill-afford. He urged the Arroyo administration to scrap the VAT, particularly on gas and power, saying the current tax system favored only the rich.

Burgos, for her part, said the Arroyo government was abducting innocent civilians to silence them from speaking out. “That is another truth: cover-up. They abduct our loved ones when they speak the truth and my son was speaking for farmers,” she said.

Lozada, who was introduced to loud cheering, encouraged the youths to speak and value the truth, despite what has happened to him.

In return for divulging the anomalies in the NBN deal, the government filed several criminal cases against him, he said.

“Of all the lies that are told to us, are there still those who question it, who fight it? We should not let it happen,” he said.